| Péter István Mészáros | |
| Birth Date: | 15 July 1943 |
| Birth Place: | Budapest, Hungary |
| Citizenship: | Hungary, United States |
| Nationality: | Hungarian |
| Field: | Astrophysics |
| Work Institution: | Pennsylvania State University |
| Alma Mater: | University of Buenos Aires University of California, Berkeley Princeton University Cambridge University |
| Doctoral Advisor: | George B. Field |
| Known For: | Gamma ray bursts, Mészáros effect |
| Awards: | Einstein Professorship, Chinese Academy of Sciences Bruno Rossi Prize First Prize, Gravity Research Foundation |
Péter István Mészáros (born 15 July 1943) is a Hungarian-American theoretical astrophysicist,best known for the Mészáros effect[1] in cosmology and for his work on gamma-ray bursts.[2] [3]
Péter Mészáros was born in 1943 in Budapest, Hungary, and grew up in Liège, Belgium and Buenos Aires,Argentina, where he did his undergraduate studies. He received his PhD in 1972 from theUniversity of California, Berkeley, and after postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton Universityand Cambridge University he became a staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.He joined the Pennsylvania State University in 1983, where for ten years hewas Head of the department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Professor of Physics, being namedEberly Chair Professor.[4]
Mészáros is widely known in the astrophysical community for his papers on the relativistic fireball shock model of gamma ray bursts and their afterglows,laying down the framework for the interplay between the jet dynamics and the external aswell as internal shocks which determine the observational aspects of these sources.He is also known in the cosmological community for the Mészáros effect,or Mészáros equation, which quantifies the influence of dark matter in the evolution ofthe initial perturbations leading to large scale structures in cosmology.He was active in the study of the interstellar medium as well as the astrophysics of black holes,and contributed broadly to the study of magnetized neutron stars, e.g.[5] He served as the science-theory lead of the NASA Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory space mission.His current interests include calculations of theoretical models of cosmic high energy cosmic rayand neutrino sources, e.g.,[6] [7] as well as exploring various aspects of multimessenger astrophysics.
Mészáros is a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (2021),[8] Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010),[9] Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2010),[10] [11] Fellow of the American Physical Society (1996) andFellow of the American Astronomical Society (2019).He is the Eberly Chair Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of Physics atPenn State, and Director Emeritus of itsCenter for Multimessenger Astrophysics.[12] He is currently a member of the Space Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences.[13]
Mészáros is married to Deborah Mészáros, and they have an adult son, Andor Mészáros.